2. See, amony many studies, Nketia, Kwabena H., “Possession Dances in African Societies,” International Folk Music Journal, 9:4–9, 1957CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bourguignon, Erika, A Cross-Cultural Study of Dissociational States, Final Report, Columbus: Ohio State University Research Foundation, 1968Google Scholar; Prince, Raymond, ed., Trance and Possession States, Montreal: R. M. Bucke Memorial Society, 1968Google Scholar; Beattie, John and Middleton, John, eds., Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa, New York: Africana Publishing Co., 1969Google Scholar; and Marshall, Lorna, “The Medicine Dance of the !Kung Bushmen,” Africa, 39(4):347–381, 1969CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. For a good introductory description of Yoruba culture, see Bascom, William, The Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969Google Scholar.

4. Told to me by Oba lyaobimisome Odu. For references to Oyo, see Smith, R. S., Kingdoms of the Yoruba, London: Methuen & Co., 1969Google Scholar, and Morton-Williams, Peter, “The Yoruba Kingdom of Oyo,” in West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century, Forde, D. and Kaberry, P. M., eds., London: Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 36–39Google Scholar, among many others.

5. The Yoruba lineage is an extensive agnatic group of males and females who trace their relationship through the male line to a founding ancestor. See Schwab, W. B., “Kinship and Lineage among the Yoruba,” Africa, 25: 352–353, 1955CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. According to Schwab, ibid., p. 353, “to the Yoruba an idile [lineage] is eternal. Whatever the internal differentiation or dynamics, or the transitory nature of its membership, an idile is conceived of as permanent. Ancestors have meaning to the lineage not only in reference to their genealogical position but also for their influence on the relations of living persons to one another.”

7. O pa kan opa keji beroko gbe keta.

8. The Yoruba tend to characterize their gods in terms of hot and cool. Morton-Williams, Peter, “An Outline of the Cosmology and Cult Organization of the Oyo Yoruba,” Africa, 34 (3):246, 1964CrossRefGoogle Scholar, makes a brief reference to this. See also Fig. 1 of the same article. Hotness is associated generally with the overt, aggressive, dynamic expenditure of energy, while coolness reflects covert power, patience, and composure.

9. Lawal, Babatunde, “Some Aspects of Yoruba Aesthetics,” The Journal of British Aesthetics, 14(3):245–246, 1974Google Scholar, says white symbolizes purity, implying the sacred and red portends danger.

10. Ondo has the alias of Oranmiyan. According to myth, two gods, Odudua (the cool creator and mythic founder of the entire Yoruba population) and Ogun (the hot warrior), fathered the same child, a child by the name of Oranmiyan (sometimes spelled, Oranyan), who was half white and half black. See Verger, Pierre, “Notes sur le Culte des Orisa et Vodun a Bahia, la Baie de Tous les Saints au Bresil et a l'Ancienne Cote des Esclaves en Afrique,” Memories de l'Ifan, No. 51:142–143, 1957Google Scholar and William Bascom, op. cit., p. 83. Bascom points out that at Ife during the festival for Oranmiyan and Ogun, the king's messengers color their bodies half white and half red.

11. I. Babalola, a town historian in Imasai, reported that destructive women (aje) are believed to have tiny knives hidden in their houses to kill people.

12. Verger, op. cit.; Wescott, Joan, “The Sculpture and Myths of Eshu-Elegba, the Yoruba Trickster: Definition and Interpretation in Yoruba Iconography,” Africa, 32(4):336–353, 1962CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Thompson, Robert Farris, Black Gods and Kings: Yoruba Art at Ucla, Occasional Papers of the Museum and Laboratories of Ethnic Arts and Technology, University of California at Los Angeles, No. 2, Chapter 4, 1971Google Scholar.

13. Thompson, ibid.

14. Elegba is a very complex and even contradictory character. He has a role in most Yoruba ritual, no matter the cult or the particular ceremony, in addition to having cults and annual ceremonies devoted specifically to him. In the discussion which follows, I will discuss one of the many aspects of Elegba which is particularly important in establishing the context of possession, ie., his symbolic role as guardian of the crossroads.

15. Verger, op. cit., p. 166.

16. Female devotees of Elegba sometimes attach carved wooden phalli to the front of their wrappers. I witnessed one such woman in 1971 at Idahin. See also Verger, , “Notes,” pp. 114–115Google Scholar. According to Wescott, op. cit., p. 343, Elegba is believed responsible for erotic dreams and illicit sexual relations. Clay images of Legba (Elegba) among the Fon are known for their large phalli, and Melville, and Herskovits, Frances in their Dahomean Narrative (Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1958)Google Scholar record numerous stories of Legba among the Fon which involve him in incest, adultery, and other sexual escapades. Particularly interesting is their account of Legba ritual dancing, pp. 39-40: “Hidden inside the tunic, and brought out at certain points in the dance is a realistically carved penis, anywhere from ten to eighteen inches in length, made of dark polished wood … At a dance, a cult-member possessed by Legba may approach any woman among the bystanders and, if the woman does not run away, will pantomime the act of coitus with her.”

17. Furthermore, in Haiti where many of the Yoruba gods have been preserved, both male and female symbols appear in the ritual signs drawn to represent the Elegba-related god, Legba. See Deren, Maya, Divine Horsemen: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti, New York: Chelsea House Pub., 1970, p. 96Google Scholar.

18. Told to me by Alapa Legbe, priest of Ifa, Aiyetoro, Nigeria (March 20, 1971).

19. Ondo ceremonies, held every 5 days (the traditional Yoruba week), alternate between the “osenla” (the great ceremony) and “ose kekere” (the small ceremony). The ose kekere is the shorter, more simplified version of the ceremony. The ceremony described here is the osenla.

20. The groups include: (1) the elderly male ministers, (2) the elderly females, (3) the “great society” of elders who carry cutlasses and staffs of authority by virtue of their age and wisdom, (4) the young warriors who carry only cutlasses to guard the road, (5) the priests, (6) the drummers, and (7) the young women who clean the grove.

21. Wescott, op. cit.; Thompson, Black Gods, Chapter 4. Verger, , “Notes,” pp. 114–115Google Scholar, notes the difference between Esu (northern Yoruba areas) and Elegba (southern including the Pobe area) who is preeminently phallic.

22. See Verger, , “Notes,” pp. 112–113Google Scholar.

23. Verger, Pierre, “Trance and Convention in Nago-Yoruba Spirit Mediumship,” in Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa, p. 55Google Scholar.

24. Thompson, Robert Farris, “The Sign of the Divine King,” African Arts, 3(3): 15, 1970CrossRefGoogle Scholar, also relates this stem-on-cap form to middle period Benin plaques.

25. See Drewal, Henry John, “Gelede Masks: Imagery and Motif,” African Arts, 7(4): 14, 1974CrossRefGoogle Scholar, plate 8, for a representation of an ilari hairstyle in the British Museum. See also a Gelede mask representing an ilari by Kougbenou of Banigbe, Dahomey, in Porto Novo (Musee Ethnographique # 55-9-43); for a photograph of ilari, see Frobenius, Leo, The Voice of Africa, (I) London: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1968, p. 157Google Scholar.

26. Verger, , “Notes,” p. 115Google Scholar, reports that it was the function of the Olori eru, the head of the ilari, to make sacrifices to Elegba. He further notes the characteristic hairstyle for which the head of the ilari is shaven except for a tuft projecting from the center of the cranium. Thus, there seems to be a direct link between the projection from the top of Elegba's head and the hairstyle of certain of the king's ilari.

27. Thompson, , “The Sign of the Divine King,” p. 8Google Scholar.

28. Morton-Williams, , “An Outline,” p. 253Google Scholar.

29. Johnson, Samuel, The History of the Yorubas, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963, pp. 60–67Google Scholar, reports that ilari travelled around the Oyo Empire supervising the government for the king. The ilari Gelede mask carved in Banigbe, Dahomey (Musee Ethnographique #55-9-43) illustrates their far-reaching influence.

30. Black Gods, Chapter 4/3.

31. ibid.

32. Verger, , “Trance and Convention,” p. 53Google Scholar.

33. ibid.

34. ibid., p. 50.

35. In the Yoruba-derived Candomble cults of Brazil, the osu is placed in an incision on the top of the head of initiates to stimulate the presence of the gods.

36. Abraham, R. C., Dictionary of Modern Yoruba, London: University of London Press, 1958, p. 492Google Scholar; Wescott, Joan and Morton-Williams, Peter, “The Symbolism and Ritual Context of the Yoruba Laba Shango,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 92(1): 25Google Scholar, January/June 1962.

37. Verger, , “Notes,” p. 115Google Scholar.

38. Wescott, loc. cit.

39. Verger, , “Trance,” p. 56Google Scholar, wrote of the possession state of the priests in the Ondo cult in Pobe which he observed sometime early in the 1950s: “Their features stiffen more and more; they swallow their saliva; their bodies sway slightly and are overrun by tremors; their eyes are shut; their hands contracted … Their faces are contracted and their mouths open. They pull their tongues and shake them. They open their eyes wide. They take on a patriarchal expression, blinking their eyelids continuously and speaking tremulously, like comedy grey-beards, very old and slightly gaga.” Verger's description compared to mine some twenty years later suggests that the ceremony is changing and the possession state is becoming less intense.

40. As will be remembered, in the pre-possession sequences, kola nuts were tossed to devotees by the priests, even when the distance between them was within arm's reach.

41. A person who freely uses the left hand in day-to-day activities risks being regarded as potentially dangerous and having supernatural powers. In another context, a politically powerful group of titled elders in Yoruba society, known as Ogboni, assert governmental authority over the king and the rest of the town through identification with the earth and the ancestors. One of the symbols of the special authority invested in them by the ancestors is the use of the left hand. A parallel to the Yoruba use of the left exists in Haitian Voodoo whereby the devotees invoke their gods: “Papa Damballa, Mistress Erzulie, with Miss Aida, I give you to eat with the left hand. It is with the left hand because you are the gods (Invisibles). I don't see you, but you do. I give you with the left hand so that you may take the right hand to protect me and my relatives.” Rigaud, Odette Messesson, “The Feasting of the Gods in Haitian Vodu,” Primitive Man (Quarterly Bulletin of the Catholic Anthropological Conference), 19(112): 18, January and April 1946Google Scholar.

42. See Laoye, H. H. I, Timi of Ede, “Yoruba Drums,” Odu, No. 7:5–14, 1959Google Scholar.

43. After a portion of a recorded tape of the Ondo ceremony had been played for the king later that afternoon during a visit, he said, “the drums are now calling the gods [to possess their priests], we cannot go any further.” The tape recorder was immediately stopped, for one must not call the gods indiscriminately or without the proper ritual observances. Thus, certain drums and rhythms are sacred and must not be played outside their ritual context.

44. Thompson, Robert Farris, African Art in Motion, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974, pp. 13–14Google Scholar. This quality persists in contemporary highlife dancing. Henry Drewal notes that during the highlife the mother drum of the dundun set of Yoruba drums takes a solo. Accompanying the drum, the highlife dancer drops down from the hips so that his back is nearly parallel to the ground. The dancer echoes the rhythm with slight drops and twists in the middle and upper torso, while the feet tend to remain stationary.

45. The aesthetics of ejika are discussed more fully in a forthcoming paper on the Yoruba-derived dances of the Afro-Brazilian cults of Bahia.

46. Henry Drewal includes in his analysis of the arts of Gelede a transcription of a sacrificial ceremony in which the priestess summonses a series of ancestors with three calls each. See Efe, /Gelede, : The Educative Role of the Arts in Traditional Yoruba Culture,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1973, p. 65Google Scholar. Three is also the mystical number of the powerful Ogboni society as evidenced in their saying “Ogboni meji, o di eta” (two Ogboni members, it becomes three). See Morton-Williams, , “The Ogboni,” p. 372Google Scholar and Thompson, Black Gods, Chapter 6/1.

47. Black Gods, Chapter 6/1.

48. “Trance,” p. 56.

49. Verger, ibid., p. 50.

50. Verger, , “Notes,” p. 135Google Scholar.

51. See his Ifa Divination: Communication between Gods and Men in West Africa, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1969, pp. 106 and 159Google Scholar.

52. For example, in Spring 1973, Geiede ceremonies were demanded by Ondo to allay the threat of drought.